


And Yonder All Before Us Lie

by SilverDagger



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Character Study, Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-19
Updated: 2011-03-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 11:19:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/848936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDagger/pseuds/SilverDagger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>T'Pring, before the wedding</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Yonder All Before Us Lie

**Author's Note:**

> Contains references to canon consent issues (potential, but not actual, sexual assault). Title is taken from the poem _To His Coy Mistress_ , by Andrew Marvell.

When she is nine years old, T'Pring finds a book of pre-Awakening mythology in her parents' library. A printed paper book, with illustrations painted jewel-bright on yellowing pages, old enough to fall apart in your hands if you do not hold it with care. She does not know why it is there, because her parents do not approve of such things. It is not logical to concern oneself with things that do not exist.

She takes the book for her own, as she has always tended to do with unattended items, and reads it in secret when she ought to be asleep, turning the pages beneath blankets pulled up over her head. The tales are fascinating, all passion and blood and forbidden emotion, and she wants to lock herself away in some quiet place and just read forever about warrior queens and mountain spirits, thieves and tricksters and sages with burning eyes.

She knows enough, by this point, to know that she needs to keep it hidden.

*

Vulcans can lie. More often than not, T'Pring chooses not to.

*

When she is thirteen, she sets the book aside, and does not pick it up again. She cannot remember what it was she saw in those old myths, or why she ever found them believable.

*

It is not logical to concern oneself with things that cannot be.

*

Now, she is older, and she wakes every morning, looks in the mirror and sees herself looking back from behind clear eyes, unflinching. Pins her hair up in braids or loops, dons layers of robes like armor.

The oldest story of all: _Hold fast to this, and nothing can touch you._

T'Pring is Vulcan, and not afraid. Not of anything.

*

Often is not always. 

*

_You are too proud_ , her mother told her once.

It is true. She is proud. It would be illogical to deny it.

Restraint was hard won, for her. She has always been too quick, too impetuous, too prone to argument. These things she hears from others, and she knows that they are true. But she _is_ proud, and it was for pride that she taught herself to hold herself still, to become the image and ideal of all a Vulcan woman should be. She will not shame herself before the eyes of others. She will not be less than she is.

Still, some days when the wind blows in hot and restless from the high places, lifts her hair and the hem of her robes and crackles electric across her skin, when the air smells of storms brewing, she feels a hollowness open up inside her, an ache for something old she has forgotten the name of.

It feels like blood to her, that wanting, like biting down on her lip until she tastes copper, thirty-seven years of stored up anger and every story she never wanted to know. And there are times when she wonders if, instead of less, she has made herself into other than what she is. Folded herself up like fabric, packed herself away for the dust to settle over in quiet halls. But it is not logical to think like that. And it is not logical to protest -

*

Vulcans do not forget the names of things. Vulcans do not forget anything at all.

*

There is a Terran saying that she heard once from the Lady Amanda, many years past: the truth shall set you free. It is not a true statement, but its inverse is.

T'Pring does not put her trust in truth, any more than she puts her trust in tradition, or in duty. Such concepts are imprecise by nature, too ambiguous. They allow too many things to pass between the lines and fall away unspoken. They are weapons that cut the wielder.

And violence, also, is illogical, and passion, also, is illogical. But the truth will not set her free.

So she keeps her pride, and with it her silence, and buries joy and anger deep. Because these things are hers. They belong to her in a way that mind and body do not, and so she weaves them through the fabric of herself, like a cloak, like a shield, like a talisman. Hers and hers only, and she will not give them up.

Most days, she does not allow herself to feel anything at all.

*

But she sees her old home in dreams sometimes, and everything is different then. In waking life, the memory is crisp and clear, as accurate as Vulcan memory ever is, as cold and sharp-edged. In dreaming, the lines blur. She walks a hall that stretches too long, opens a door that had not been there before, steps through it into unexpected and familiar darkness or the soft red light of Shi'Kahr at sunrise, plains and canyons stretching out unbound, for eternity.

*

She finds the book of folklore again, looking through her family's belongings in search of a white dress that has been carefully folded and set away and never quite forgotten. She turns the pages, breathing in the scent of old dust and binding glue, brushing her fingers lightly across faded ink.

Many things are not logical. This does not mean they are never true.

And the dress, when she finds it, is as well-made as she remembers, and almost as beautiful. It is made of fragile stuff, clinging and cool to the touch, and it is not hers, she does not own it, she cannot keep it because it was made to be destroyed.

And she is Vulcan. And she is not afraid.

She stands, feels the silky fabric pooling in her hands, spilling out onto the floor.

_Hold fast to this._

She folds the dress with care, in half and then in half again, knows that she will be wearing it soon.

And she remembers wind in her hair, night and distance. Remembers running, fast enough and far enough that the air burns in her lungs, the world falling open before her. Unbound. For eternity.

_Hold fast._

She retrieves the book from the floor, feels the weight of it in her hands, finds a place for it on the shelf. After all this time, this at least she owns, and she will keep it. There will be time for stories later, perhaps. There will be times for many things. Later.

She walks with measured steps to the window, opens it and stands for a long time, looking out. The streets are laid in an orderly grid far beneath her, but she isn't looking down or back, or even inward. She's looking up. The sky is gold and crimson with sunset, fire on the horizon and night above, and T'Khut is a burnished crescent that appears close and sharp enough to reach up and cut your skin, clean enough to barely leave a scar. A sky so vast it could pull you up and into it, and leave nothing behind at all. 

She turns away, back towards the center, stands with head bowed and hands clenched into fists. Thinking about what is logical and what is true, and what will set her free.

And then she walks over to the door, and opens it. And then she walks out.

Night is falling, and there is rain and lightning in the desert air.


End file.
